The Confession Dial
by Gallowmere
Summary: A surprise visit from the Master leads 13 to try increasingly desperate measures to get the truth. Complete!
1. Chapter 1

The Confession Dial

Note: Quick note! Not a follow up the Oncoming Storm. The gang don't know about Gallifrey here.

Chapter 1

The fam were just sitting around talking when the Master suddenly teleported into the TARDIS.

All three of them jumped up, flinching away from him. The Master laughed, pocketing his device and taking out something else.

He held it threateningly towards the group, who were trying to back towards the stairs so they could alert the Doctor.

"Ah - ah - ah." He pointed the device at an old Kerblam package and shrunk it. "One false move and you're all dead."

Just then the Doctor moved silently onto the stairs behind him. She took in the whole situation in one glance and before anyone had time to think she stealthily moved behind the Master and tapped him on the shoulder.

He turned and she decked him with all her strength in the face, sending him sprawling to the ground. The companions recovered from the shock of seeing the Doctor hit someone and scrambled to grab the device that had fallen from his hands, but the Doctor just calmly moved over to the console and flipped a few switches.

A blue beam of light surrounded the Master and when he got back up he walked straight into it like he'd crashed into a wall. He growled low in his throat, staring down the Doctor. She watched him right back, a cold look on her face the others had never seen.

"I knew you'd be back," she said.

He tried to sneer, but couldn't stop one hand going to his jaw. "Looking for me, were you?"

She turned back to the console and started flipping switches. "I need to drop you all off," she said. "Sorry. Lots to do."

They all exchanged glances. After the Judoon incident they hoped they'd see an end to her shutting them out, and up until now she seemed to have been doing better.

She caught the looks on their faces. "I know," she said, softening. "But I need to speak to him one to one. Can you trust me with this?"

They exchanged glances again, Graham speaking for the group like usual. "We trust you, Doc. We just don't trust him."

"Yes, Doctor," the Master said. "Don't send the children away. Let them hear."

She ignored him. "Here. Take the com dots. I need backup, I call you. Fair?"

The boys took one each, but Yaz hesitated. "Doctor, I don't like this... he's too dangerous..."

"Have all of you failed to notice she punched me first?" the Master grumbled.

The Doctor ignored him. She focused on the group, feeling the unease in the air. Even though only Yaz had spoken up, they all had that look on their faces that they got a lot lately, like they were holding themselves back from saying something.

Family. She needed to remember they were family, just as much as she fixated on her duty of care. And family didn't make other family worry.

"...An hour," she said. "I promise to contact you in one hour. But right now, I just need a little space to address something. Can you give me that?"

They exchanged glances and the Doctor tried to keep her face neutral. She had caught sight of herself in reflections before, something burning in her eyes no matter how hard she tried to keep it down. And she was so desperate to be alone with the Master, to interrogate him, that her hands were trembling on the console.

They didn't notice. They looked amongst themselves and nodded. Then Graham surprised her by grabbing her in a quick hug. "One hour on the dot, Doc," he said, glancing at the Master with a look she immediately identified, having felt it so often herself: a familial, even parental, protectiveness.

Of her.

She swallowed down a lump in her throat. "I'll see you soon," she said. "I promise."

She flipped the lever.

The Master clicked his tongue. "Such a shame. They could've had an entertaining show."

The Doctor didn't look at him as she turned dials on the sonic and pressed a button. The little device emitted an ear piercing screech at a frequency only Time Lords could hear. She grit her teeth as the sound ripped through her skull, then shut it off and turned to face the Master.

She'd caught him off guard - he had doubled over, hands clapped to his ears. "The hell was that for?"

"I don't want to hear anything from you except answers to my questions," she said. "You talk out of turn, you get the noise. Understand?"

"That noise affects you, too." He smirked. "You would hurt yourself to hurt me, then? Sounds like something I would do."

"You bloody died to spite me. Don't compare us."

But she knew he wasn't listening. His smile was a full, satisfied one. He looked her up and down, very, very slowly, and she felt her skin crawl. "How else are you like me? How far would you go?"

"Tell me about the Timeless Child. Tell me why you did what you did."

He leant back. "I told you. You have to discover that for yourself."

"Made that a little difficult, didn't you? Everyone I cpuld ask is dead!"

The intensity of his gaze increased. He was staring into her eyes like he'd happily do it forever. "How did it feel for you, love?"

Her fingers twitched on the sonic. He grinned a manic grin. "When it was you who destroyed Gallifrey, didn't it feel... good? Didn't it feel so much better to be powerful, to remake the universe how you wanted?"

She set off the frequency again but this time he didn't cover his ears. He smiled, feral, mustered through it.

"No," she said, when the ringing in her ears died down. "I don't feel that. I hated myself."

He clicked his tongue. "It was your best moment. I was so sad when I found out you'd overwritten it."

She turned away. "Let me know when you're ready to talk. I'm not going to stand here and play head games with you."

"What if I'm right?" he said suddenly, and she stopped. "What if you agree with me, that they deserved it?"

She fought to keep her voice steady. "No matter what the Time Lords did, the rest of the planet didn't deserve to die. They were innocent."

He laughed. "Relative term, love. Big words from the one who left first and never came back." He cackled so hard he started to retch and she couldn't help but look back at him, appalled. He sobered up, pressing his head as close to the forcefield as possible. "Ohhh... don't look at me like that, love. Deep down inside, you know when you look in the mirror, it's me that looks back. You need me to remind you where you came from. Especially after you tried so hard to forget this time. Without me, you wouldn't be you."

She pressed the sonic against the forcefield and blasted the noise straight in his ear. The Master cried out, flinched back.

"Ha! Funny joke!" She glared back at him, getting up close to look him in the eye. "I was without you, nearly a whole year. And you know what I was?" The anger boiled over and she knew she was too far gone to stop it now. "Happier. I was so much happier without you."

She went back to the console and started flipping dials. Forget this. She just needed to dump him somewhere he couldn't cause trouble...

"I was so much happier when I didn't have to deal with you and your bullshit." And she turned to retreat into the TARDIS, anywhere to get away from him.

"I know about the Confession dial," he said.

She stopped dead.

"Yes, that's right, my dear Doctor." His voice was deadly serious now, as morose as it has been on the first message. "I know what they did to you...how they locked you up for billions and billions of years. How you didn't give in to them."

A cold chill spread over her skin. She risked looking back, finding him watching her, cold anger in his eyes.

"And how you let them get away with it." He shook his head, tsk'ed at her. "Such an insult to the one who saved all their lives. I wouldn't have stood for it, but I knew you didn't have the stomach to punish them."

"What are you saying...?" she whispered, dread pooling in her stomach.

"The Timeless Child isn't the only reason I destroyed Gallifrey." He saw the horror in her eyes, she saw him feeding on it. "Yes, my love. I also did it...to get revenge, for you. Always for you."

The Doctor staggered back, hand going to her mouth to contain her agony. The carnage, everything she had seen on Gallifrey...

For her.

He had destroyed everything for her.

She was bending double, gasping. And he was watching ever little bit of her agony, she knew it better than she knew anything. She wanted to tell herself he was lying, but she knew that wasn't the case, either.

Then a simple thought came through: no.

No more of this.

She straightened, a primal rage clearing her head. Her hand moved to the console and she regarded him with cold burning eyes.

"There she is..." he whispered, choking up.

She shut off the forcefield, leaving the two them alone in the TARDIS, no barriers left to protect him from her.

"All right, love." He straightened his suit, beckoning her. "Come and get me."


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Two out of three! There'll be one more chapter after this.

Chapter 2

For a moment they just stood staring each other down. The Doctor pushed at his mental barriers and when she met no resistance, she opened the floodgates on him.

Every bad thought, every depressive spiral she had had over the last few weeks was weaponised and used to bombard his mind, every dizzy sensation from lack of sleep, every hunger pang from her lack of appetite, everything deployed with a furious refrain of: You did this. You did this. You hurt me. You won.

His expression stayed neutral, so she changed tack, sending him every happy, carefree memory she could muster. How much lighter she felt those first few months, new again.

How much of a gut punch it had been, seeing him again.

A slight change in his expression. She was getting to him.

Good.

She crossed the space towards him and feinted a blow and he went to guard but at he last second she switched sides and struck at the vulnerable nerve cluster in his shoulder. He cried out and doubled up and she followed through, knocking him off his feet to the floor, keeping him down with her own body weight.

He didn't try to throw her off, she didn't pin him down. Instead the Doctor put her hands to his temples, focusing her energy towards his mind.

"Show me," she demanded. "Show me what you know."

He lay there on his back, staring up at her. "Go on then, love," he said softly. "Take a look."

She searched his face for deception, found none. She shut her eyes and reached out.

A flash of the Timeless Child appeared before her, but then it was gone. The Doctor chased it into the dark, but different images and sounds assaulted her.

Drums. The pounding of drums, the deafening beating of a familiar heart.

The madness came next, his irrepressible urge to hurt everyone, even her, especially her, even when he didn't get much enjoyment out of it.

The grief he felt that so mirrored hers. The question of whether she felt the same the first time around.

She chased harder, the answer pulling away from her into a fog of his memories. The Master sat up suddenly, but he didn't try to push her off. He pressed their foreheads together, hands coming up to hold her face...creeping up to her temple.

She had a chance to pull back, didn't take it.

The Master pushed back, looking into her memories with such ferocity she was halted in her search of his mind. The images that flashed before her were from her other self, the one he hadn't seen.

Then he started looking at the year with her fam, maybe checking the claim that she was happier without him. She let him look.

Then something changed. The two of them ceased looking at the same time, the contact becoming a mind meld of abstract thought and feeling.

Grief rose up from the murky gloom and she didn't know if it was hers or his, but he was there with her, feeling it too. His fingers just brushed into her hair as it crashed over them both. The tears she'd been fighting to keep down welled up in her eyes. She didn't let them fall, but he knew anyway. He was stroking at her temples with his thumb, saying something she couldn't quite catch.

After the grief, the deep soul aching tiredness. She knew this one came from her.

All the anger, grief and hatred... he pulled it from her, taking it all in, accepting all of it without disgust or revulsion. She gasped at the feeling of the weight lifting, at how much easier it was to breathe for the first time in weeks.

"I can take it," he said. "Put it on me, if you want to run."

She shook her head, feeling an unspoken snare in his words. Anything to have her attention. Anything to be needed.

Her nails dug into his hair.

"What if I erased it?" she whispered. "Your memories. Then we would both be..."

He didn't even flinch at the awful words. He just reached up, covering her hands with his and sliding them down, down to put her hands to his neck. She would have blushed at the intimacy, if it wasn't for what she new he would say next.

"Death would be kinder," he said, "Love."

She let her hands drop, leaning into their mental link. "Sorry... I'm so sorry..."

Through the link she felt it: he was sorry too.

He would just never say so.

His hands dropped from her temples and she felt the shift in his thoughts as he very gently touched one hand to the side of her neck, her collarbone.

Now she was blushing.

His other hand raised her chin, and he gently pressed their lips together.

Then he pulled away, the link severing and all her grief and anger dropping back onto her like a lead weight.

She grabbed at the console to anchor herself, one hand pressed to her chest. The Master shimmied out from under her, looking down at her with a neutral expression.

"I can't give you what you want, Doctor," he said. "But you might be wiser to think about what you need."

"W-what?"

"Your little pets. I can feel it clearly, how you won't let them help you..." His mouth turned down sourly. "You want to get through what's coming without wanting to burn everything to the ground? You'll need them. Unless," he said, smiling wickedly, "You like ending up here in the dark... with me."

She stood, straightening her clothes and hair. "I'd like you to leave now," she said softly.

He smiled. "Fine. I'll be seeing you again, soon enough." He rubbed his jaw as he headed to the TARDIS door. "And your right hook... you've still got it in you."

She turned her back on him, waiting for the tell tale crackle of whatever teleporter he was using.

But then he reached out to her mind again, sending one last thought:

_I know you were bored without me._

She tried to slam the connection shut, but he held out one last second.

He said: _I know I was bored without you_.

Then a crackle of electricity and she span around just in time to see him vanish.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Turns out I have another speed than angst. Spoiler: it's fluff.

The Doctor landed in the usual spot in Sheffield, just outside Yaz's flat. She didn't really have a plan in mind, but it suddenly occurred to her that Ryan and Yaz would be probably be working, since it was a weekday.

At least, she was pretty sure it was a weekday.

So she started walking, trying to remember how to get to Graham's house. She'd landed in his front room before, it couldn't be too hard. All she had to do was follow the lat and long co ordinates she remembered...

She reached a street she was sure she recognised, but the outside of the houses all looked the same. What was it with humans and uniformity?

A group of people chatting on the street corner spotted her, looked her over. Some seemed bemused but one of the men called out, "You all right, love?"

She cleared her throat. "Looking for Graham O'Brien's place?"

"You want number three then."

She looked where he was pointing, spotted a familiar pot plant she had missed the first time. "Oh, brilliant! Thanks."

He nodded and they went back to chatting, but she couldn't help picking out what they were saying as she headed up Graham's drive.

"Do you know her?"

"Dunno. Feel like I might've seen her before..."

"Well, yeah, the outfit's pretty...unique."

"Sounds like she's from around here."

The man who had called out to her said, "I don't think so."

"What? Why?"

"Dunno. Just don't."

She tuned back out from what they were saying and rang Graham's doorbell. There was a long pause, long enough she started to worry he was out, before he cracked open the door.

"Doc?"

She didn't even have time to greet him before he grabbed her in a hug. "You are a sight for sore eyes, cockle," he said, squeezing. "We were a little worried when we didn't hear from you."

"Oh, no, how long has it been? Could've sworn I landed-"

"Two days, Doc."

He still hadn't let go. She reached up and, gingerly, hugged him back. It was...nice. It had been a long time since anyone had given her a hug...

He let go. "You all right? Did you need something?"

"No, I just thought- if you weren't busy..." She waited, hoping he would catch on. He didn't. "Cup of tea?"

"Oh! Yeah, 'course. Come on in." He looked surprised but happily showed her to the kitchen, where the Doctor busied herself finding mugs and making them both a cup. "How, uh... how did things, you know, go? With the Master?"

She bit her lip as she waited for the kettle to boil, trying to figure out what to say.

"...Is it OK to ask?" he said, sounding a bit nervous.

"Yeah! Course," she said, then realised how dumb that sounded when she had spent so much time avoiding their questions. "I mean... yeah. It was - frustrating. That message he left me... he didn't want to, erm, discuss it. I let him off the ship."

"Was that wise?"

"Wiser than keeping him on the TARDIS, probably." She set the mug down and debated what to say. "Listen, Graham..." She struggled to find the words, all the things she wanted to say too hard to get out. "Could I stay with you today?"

"Absolutely. Love to have you."

She looked up, surprised at his lack of pause. "What, really?"

"Of course really! Come on, Doc, why would I throw you out? We practically live in your home, why shouldn't you spend some time in ours?"

She couldn't control the beam that spread over her face. "Brilliant! This calls for biscuits! D'you have any?"

She sprang out of her seat and started searching through cupboards, opening one to find the jackpot: custard creams. "Oh, bingo!" On closer inspection, she noticed he had more than one packet, and they hadn't been opened. "Been sleeping on these, haven't you?"

"Well..." Graham coughed and she turned to find him rubbing the back of his neck. "I bought them just in case, y'know, you ever dropped around again."

She paused, the packet of biscuits - plain yellow packaging from a local supermarket - suddenly heavy in her hand. "Oh. Um, thanks. Appreciate it. They're my favourite."

"No problem," he said, smiling in a way that crinkled all his lines. "Doc."

She swallowed hard. Damn. Tears coming on. Couldn't do tears in front of Graham. She sank back into her seat, putting the biscuits down between them and hiding her face in her tea until she could get hold of herself.

"There are some quizzes I watch around this time," Graham volunteered, opening the biscuits and nudging one over to her.

"Oh, right?"

"Yeah. Never learn owt but I like to think I'm keeping my mind sharp when you're not filling it with technobabble."

"Oi! I'll have you know I'm a great educational resource. Think of all the things you've seen."

"No kidding," he said somberly, draining his cup. "You've changed my life, Doc. Ryan and Yaz's, too. Ryan's more determined than ever to get his NVQ. All this saving people lark has really given him some confidence."

"Confidence," she repeated. All the changes she'd seen in her companions over the years and somehow she'd never noticed that happening. Usually by the time she did notice, it had morphed into suicidal overconfidence and that was that. "Good. Good, good. I'm glad."

"Doc?"

She popped another custard cream in her mouth. "Mm?"

"You're doing that mumbly repeating yourself thing." He took his mug to the sink. "You sure their wasn't something you needed to... You know, talk about?"

"Talk. I, uh." She swallowed the lump along with the biscuit down. "I'd think I'd like to...be here."

"How'd you mean? You're here already."

"I know that, I meant..." She sighed. As much as she loved talking - gabbing, really - having 'a talk' was so difficult. Words for so inadequate for what she went through on a regular basis. "You said we were... Family. I want to be around my family, just a bit more."

He nodded, not even offended by how much she was avoiding eye contact. "All right, Doc." Then he nudged her shoulder. "Come on. Terrible TV quizes await."

Later on, while they were watching the news together, the phone rang. Graham picked it up, saying, "Oh hey, Yaz." He grinned and winked at the Doctor, putting a finger to his lips before the Doctor could say anything. "Listen, can you come over? Are you meeting Ryan on the way? Great, bring him too. Got a surprise for you both." Then he hung up.

The Doctor watched him as he settled back into his chair."Ooh, a surprise? What's the surprise? I love surprises."

He gave her a funny look. "I'm taking a nap, all right, Doc? Watch whatever you like until they get here." And he set the remote next to her on the sofa and shut his eyes without a further word.

The Doctor channel-hopped for a while until she settled on a rerun of an old British science fiction show. Pretty cheesy with cheap effects in parts, but it was good enough to distract her until the doorbell rang.

Graham must have been catnapping, because he was out of his chair and leaving the front room by the time she had stood up. She followed close behind and he swung the door open on a confused Yaz and Ryan, saying, "Surprise!" and then moving to one side.

"Doctor!" they said in unison when they spotted her, Yaz especially beaming.

"Hi," she said, smiling back and feeling inexplicably like she really meant it for the first time in a while. She looked at Graham for confirmation, and he raised his eyebrows a little and nodded. She grinned from ear to ear this time, and said, "Hi, fam."

Yaz grabbed her in a hug and before the Doctor even had time to react, the others joined in, squeezing each other tightly in Graham's little front room. And a little, just a little, of the tension left her shoulders.

Despite it all, the Master had been right about one thing: she was going to need them. She was going to need them a lot.

But for right now, she just wanted to be here with them, in this moment together.


End file.
